Chances for life expand when passing stars push binaries together

Chances for life expand when passing stars push binaries together
Planetary systems can be harsh environments in their early history. The young worlds orbit suns in stellar nurseries, clusters of stars where violent encounters are commonplace. None of this makes it easy for life to get going, but now astronomers at the University of Sheffield find one positive of this tumultuous period. A model developed by undergraduate student Bethany Wootton and Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow Dr. Richard Parker looks at how the habitable zone—the region around a star where the temperature allows liquid water to exist—changes around pairs of stars, so-called binary systems.
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